NASA to build for manned Mars mission

Eric Berger, Hearst Newspapers

Published 5:43 pm, Saturday, August 30, 2014

After three years in development and $2.7 billion in costs, NASA said last week it would go ahead and build its Space Launch System, but acknowledged the massive rocket's initial test flight will likely slip a year, to 2018.

The agency announced that the rocket program, in both internal and external reviews, passed a key milestone that moves the program from the design phase into construction.

"This is a big step for us," said NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot, who oversaw the review process.

The design and development of the rocket, which was led by the Marshall Space Flight Center, incorporates elements of the retired space shuttle, including its main engines.

The Space Launch System, or SLS, would be NASA's first new heavy- lift rocket in four decades. NASA hopes to use the rocket, which initially will be able to lift 70 metric tons into orbit around Earth, as a workhorse to mount a human mission to Mars in the 2030s or 2040s.

As part of last week's announcement the agency said it would spend about $7 billion more on the SLS between this year and November 2018, a "no later than" date by which the agency now believes it can launch the rocket.

The decision -- known in NASA jargon as Key Decision Point-C -- commits the space agency to spend those funds.

NASA already is conducting tests on components of the SLS at Marshall, in northern Alabama, and building pieces of the rocket at the Michoud Assembly Facility near New Orleans. Johnson Space Center, in Houston, is working on developing the Orion capsule, which will sit atop the rocket and carry a crew of astronauts.

NASA had originally targeted late 2017 for the first test flight of the SLS. William Gerstenmaier, who oversees human exploration for NASA, said that date remains possible and NASA engineers will work to meet that deadline. But he said NASA didn't want to formally establish a date and then miss it.

"Everyone wants to focus on the launch date, but we don't want to get specific right now," he said.

"We're building a system that's going to be around for multiple decades."

Gerstenmaier said NASA has funds to conduct the 2018 test flight, which will not carry humans, and another one in the early 2020s that would carry a crew. It is likely this second flight will not have a specific destination, however, as NASA has no funds for anything more than a basic test flight.

Critics have questioned whether building a rocket without specific missions in mind is a viable strategy.

"Historically, it would be putting the cart before the horse," said Harrison Schmitt, an Apollo 17 astronaut, in an interview earlier this year. "Apollo was sustained because Congress and the country agreed that we ought to do it. It's not quite so clear now, at least in the Congress, that the motivation is anything more than jobs."